Like it or not, it’s the time of the year for making well-meaning resolutions. Obviously this year I will be losing weight, getting fit, reading 200 books, donating half my disposable income to charity, that sort of thing.

OK, maybe not, but it’s nice to have a few good intentions, especially after spending most of December eating mince pies and Elizabeth Shaw mints for breakfast. That’s why when I was offered to review Skinny Sprinkles again, and stepped with trepidation onto the scales for the first time in about three months, I thought I’d better say yes. View Post

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Looking to shift a bit of weight? Have a read of my Skinny Sprinkles review to see if this product could help you…

I’m one of those people who love eating. I love the taste of food, I love how it feels in my mouth and I love how it makes me feel. To me, eating isn’t just a survival thing, it’s a total pleasure. I often think that if I could have one wish, I’d choose to be able to eat and drink whatever I wanted and it never have any adverse effect on my weight or health. Sod world peace.

Which is all well and good, except eating does make you fat. There’s no escaping that, and eating at my normal rate, which is me being fairly restrained, seems to equate to putting on about half a stone every year. Half a stone may not seem like much, but add that up and it means that by the time I’m 50 I’ll have put on eight stone. Not pretty.

Now generally I don’t buy into the whole dieting culture, and I certainly don’t think women need to be thin to be sexy or desirable or feel good about themselves, but I also don’t particular want to be a heffalump when I retire, so when I was asked if I’d like to review Skinny Sprinkles, I thought I might as well give it a go, and see if I could shed some of 2011’s excess.

I was slightly worried at first that I’d signed up for one of those diet regimes where you eat nothing but shakes, but thankfully Skinny Sprinkles are snack replacements, rather than meal replacements, designed purely to control your appetite between meals and your portion sizes, rather than turning you into a starving, caffeinated lunatic.

When they arrived, I got rather excited by the idea of having three ‘smoothies’ a day as a treat, and after I’d made up the first one, (paying careful attention to the instructions, and not simply opening the sachet and sprinkling the powder into my mouth*), I began sipping my tasty snack. This was a big mistake. These ‘smoothies’ are not delicious. They taste a bit like soluble paracetamol with strawberry pips in. I would recommend stirring them really fast until everything is floating nicely, and then gulping it down in one. [Update – Skinny Sprinkles have improved their recipe since I wrote this – check out my later Skinny Sprinkles review for more info.]

Still, they are a diet aid, not a Mars Bar, and actually the fact that they were a tad gruesome worked in their favour. If I did find myself wanting something else to eat, I just remembered the smoothie, and asked myself ‘do I really want to have drunk that for nothing?’

I’m being a bit melodramatic, and they did grow on me after a while to be honest – I just needed to get into the right frame of mind, and not expect them to be an actual replacement, enjoyment wise, for three chocolate Hobnobs.

How do they work then? Well, here’s the science…

“Glucomannan is scientifically proven by the EFSA to aid weight reduction as part of a calorie controlled diet and is a water-soluble dietary fibre from the root of the Konjac plant. By delaying the absorption of glucose by the stomach, it slows down the digestive process and absorbs up to 200 times its weight in water – swelling when it mixes with water in your stomach – making you feel fuller.”

They also contain caffeine in the form of guarana and green tea for an extra pick me up, although I did check, and a whole day’s worth of sachets contains less caffeine than one fresh coffee, so you’re not going to be bouncing off the ceiling or anything.

And you know what? They actually worked. Whether it was the sachets themselves, the boost it gave to my willpower, or a combination of the two, I don’t know, but at the end of a week I had lost four whole pounds!

The downside I’d say is the cost. At £29.95 for a week’s supply, this certainly isn’t a cheap long-term solution, but I reckon for just a couple of weeks a year, if it means that for the other 50 I can eat my usual amount of cake for breakfast, then it’s not a bad investment at all.

Have you tried Skinny Sprinkles? Why not leave your own Skinny Sprinkles review in the comments and let me know what you think!

*This was an actual warning. Who would do that??

PS I am currently on the short list for the ‘Style’ award in the Brilliance in Blogging Awards. Please take half a minute to cast your vote and tick the Slummy single mummy box.

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Yesterday afternoon was one of those lovely afternoons where you get engrossed in an activity and look up to find it has got dark.

Belle was at her Dad’s, and Bee came home from school to find me having a little lie down in bed, as you do, in preparation for having to stay up past 10pm later that evening. She came and sat in bed with me and decided she wanted to get herself some moo cards and stickers. If you haven’t come across these before you should really have a look – they are mini business cards you can personalise with up to 100 of your own photos on the back, so every card has a unique design.

Anyway, I digress.

I had recently uploaded all the old photos from our wind up, clockwork computer, onto an external hard drive, so we wouldn’t have to wait three days for every new picture to load, whilst listening to the tower whirr and grind like an old fashioned windmill. Blimey, am I really talking about hard drives? Gosh, this is a terribly dull post. Basically, the point is that we ended up spending a lovely two and a half hours looking through all our old photos and gasping over how tanned and plump and glossy we all looked. Look at these chubby cheeks:

Mummy blog

I love this one too at the donkey sanctuary. Belle has such a serious expression on her face, as though she is presenting a Open University programme on donkeys:

Donkey sanctuary

Now last year, as part of a competition with my pregnant sister whereby I had to weigh less than she did at nine months pregnant (she is very thin, honest), I lost about 20lbs. At the time I was thrilled, but looking back I’m not so sure it has done me any favours. I certainly don’t generally feel happier because of it. Looking back I can’t help but feel that actually I looked pretty good with a bit of extra weight. Sort of fuller and rounder, and younger too. I don’t know. Like this one of me and Bee at a festival in summer 2008. Look at that cleavage!

family festival

I look at the three of us now, and I worry that we have lost our shine. We all look a bit pasty and tired. Our skin doesn’t glow like it did. I know it’s winter, and I’m sure we’ll all look much better in a few months time, but I do wonder if we should more often look back through at pictures of ourselves and pay more attention to our exteriors, as a way of looking at our interiors. It was obvious from the photos over the years when we were going through happy periods, like here:

family festival

You can also see when times were perhaps tougher. Yet it is so easy to ignore these obvious outward signs, albeit unintentionally. I’m not saying we’re having an awful time or anything, but I think it would be fair to say the last six to twelve months have been hard work, with lots of changes, and that this is starting to show.

So my plan for the next six months is to feed us up, get us out in the sunshine and shake off the cobwebs. By the end of the summer I want us all to have shiny coats, waggy tails and wet noses. Hoorah! Now where did I put that Dairy Milk…

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